‘Your discount offer is fake,’ advertising body tells OneDayOnly

An advertising promotion offering a whopping 33% discount on Lego Christmas calendar sets has been found to be misleading and false. 

The limited special offer advertised by online discount dealer OneDayOnly has been found to be in breach of the Advertising Code of Conduct and the industry has been instructed not to accept the advert in its current form. 

This comes after a consumer keen on the deal did a quick search and found the same Lego sets being offered everywhere else for the same price and felt that the “33% off for just 24 hours” was a bogus offer designed to deceive buyers. 

OneDayOnly claimed that their sales price team had checked out and verified their supplier’s claim that the Lego sets normally sell for R700 and that offering them for R469 was indeed a legit special. But the Advertising Regulatory Board rumbled the claims as fake by carrying out their own quick Google search and discovered that even Lego itself is selling the advent calendar sets for R469. 

The decision by the ARB follows a complaint by consumer Brendan Sutcliffe, who submitted that he received an email alerting him to a 33% discount offered on Lego advent calendar sets from www.onedayonly.co.za.

However, when he compared this 33% discount offer to the same normal-priced offers at the time, he realised that the alleged 33% discount was untrue. The sets were being offered at similar prices by other retailers that were not claiming that their prices were discounted at all. 

While OneDayOnly is not a member of the ARB and therefore does not submit to its jurisdiction, they did respond when informed of the complaint against their advertising. 

OneDayOnly told the ARB that its sales team conducts comparative pricing research on all products featuring a comparative retail price before putting its deals out. However, they conceded that their searches are “not exhaustive” and pointed out that product pricing across retailers vary daily, and so comparative pricing on the day of the offer may not be aligned to prevailing prices at the time, because other retailers could have adjusted their prices. 

Responding to the complaint about the claimed discount on the 2023 Lego advent calendar sets, it said its supplier had provided the retail prices for the Friends and City Exploration sets as R700. 

While the advertiser has admitted that its search is not exhaustive, the fact that the directorate was able to find so many other examples with a mere Google search creates an impression that the advertiser does very little to substantiate its claimed savings.

—  Advertising Regulatory Board

OneDayOnly claimed that before listing the sets for R469 for a day, comparative offers reviewed by its sales team in judging the reasonability of the given retail price found that the Friends and City Exploration sets were retailing on Takealot for R799. 

Based on this, the OneDayOnly sales team had decided that the retail price of R700, as stated by its supplier, was reasonable and sufficient to substantiate the claim and subsequent saving. 

They also pointed out that it was unclear from the complaint whether the comparative prices Sutcliffe had found were actually valid on the day of complaint, whether this related to stock that still had to be imported, or whether the comparative prices were also a special offer. 

The ARB considered the complaint in light of the Code of Advertising Practice in relation to “misleading claims” and “price comparisons”. It decided to make a ruling for the guidance of its members and reviewed the complaint as a general objection to the 33% discount claim.

Because various set prices such as the Star Wars, Marvel Avengers and Harry Potter were referred to in the complaint, only the Friends and the Lego City sets given as checked by the advertiser were used for comparison checks. 

The ARB noted that the advertising code requires the content of adverts to contain enough clarity to allow customers to make informed choices about the product or services offered, pertinently stating that “advertising should not deceive by means of ambiguity, omission of material information, or exaggeration”.

In terms of comparing prices with competitors, advertisers should be able to provide “satisfactory documentary evidence” when called on to account for their claimed reductions or savings. 

“The advertisement provided by the complainant features a clear indication of the ‘retail’ price of these Lego sets as R700. In addition, it features a highlighted box with the words ‘SAVE 33%’ above the image of a child playing with this set. This is an unambiguous and unlimited claim that customers who buy through the advertiser’s online store would save 33% as compared to other stores,” the ARB stated. 

Sutcliffe felt this claim was inaccurate, as he was able to find another retailer — greatyellowbrick.co.za, the official site for Lego — selling the various sets at the same price as the OneDayOnly “discount” price. The advertiser in turn submitted that Takealot was offering the same items for R799. 

The ARB’s directorate conducted its own online search for the Lego set prices and found the Friends set retailing for R499,90 at Toys R Us, for R479,90 at Toy Kingdom, for R459 at Loot, on special at Importatoy Toy for R407,15 (regular price given as R479) and for R358 at Takealot. 

“While the advertiser has admitted that its search is not exhaustive, the fact that the directorate was able to find so many other examples with a mere Google search creates an impression that the advertiser does very little to substantiate its claimed savings. If anything, the two different offers on www.takealot.co.za would, presumably, also have been visible to the advertiser at the time,” the ARB stated in finding that OneDayOnly had failed to provide satisfactory documentary evidence to show their deal was legitimate. 

“Its unconditional and unlimited claim offering customers to ‘SAVE 33%’ therefore appears to be unjustified and inaccurate,” the ARB said in finding that the offer was misleading and false. 

Its sanction was to call on all members of the ARB to reject OneDayOnly adverts claiming a 33% discount on Lego advent calendar sets.